Peachy Perfect Spring Barn Wedding

Today we have peachy perfection for you in the form of WWW readers Georgia and Andy’s special day. They chose Moreves Barn in Suffolk to celebrate on the 26th May 2018, following a really personal church service.

Their wedding really was full of the joys of spring and you really get a sense of the beautiful English countryside, all brilliantly captured by the very talented Gemma Giorgio. Thank you for sharing these sublime images with us Gemma.

Our clever pair made lots of the gorgeous details themselves, and as a graphic designer Georgia designed all the stationery of course. Not to mention the beautifully painted wooden signs and décor and Andy’s mum’s brilliant cake. You’re absolutely going to love this one, especially if you’re planning a spring wedding yourself.

You can almost smell the gorgeous florals and the delicious herby scent of the eucalyptus. Georgia’s talented Godmother was responsible for the flowers, and what a great job she did! Abundant peonies and roses really make for quite an incredible sight! Enjoy!

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The Proposal

In June 2016 we decided to book a city break to celebrate our seven year anniversary coming up in September. Rome had always been on our list of places to visit, so it seemed like the perfect getaway! A holiday couldn’t come soon enough as we hadn’t been abroad for a while, as we were saving to buy our first home. September came and although in my head I knew it would be lovely – I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high! On the morning of our anniversary – Andy had arranged to have breakfast delivered to our room and it was such a lovely surprise. Trying to work out what was underneath each cloche dome cover, I stopped to just enjoy what I was eating. In the moment I didn’t really notice that Andy wasn’t eating very much but after lifting the lid and seeing a little blue box it then all made sense. It was the most perfect morning… Just the two of us, celebrating seven years and now an engagement!

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The Vision

We had always spoken about having a wedding out in the countryside, and as a child spending many weekends in Suffolk visiting my father’s family – it seemed like a good place to start looking. A church was a must for us and a barn… A soft colour palette, a relaxed setting and lots of Peonies and Eucalyptus!

The Planning Process

We didn’t waste any time in planning and started putting together a guest list on the last evening of our trip in Rome. We wanted to get the big things booked first – and then everything else seemed to fall into place. Booking the main elements of the day first meant that we could pick the best of the suppliers and guarantee our date! We worked over the year to create all of the small details and make our day as personal as we could.

Budget

We never really had a set ‘budget’ – but we kept on top of our spending with a very detailed spreadsheet!

The Readings & Music

I walked down the aisle to ‘Pachelbel’s Canon in D’, played on the organ. We wanted to pick a traditional bible reading “1 Corinthians (13)” as our first reading and the second was: “I will be here” by Stephen Curtis Chapman. We loved the words in both and they seemed so fitting for our service. Our vows were just the traditional ones, and we had three hymns during the service: ‘How great thou art’, ‘Lord of all hopefulness’ and ‘Guide me, o thou great Redeemer’. We exited the church to ‘Mendelssohn’s Wedding March’

We had our friends Alice and Jack singing at the reception when guests arrived – beautiful voices and a stunning setting!

In the evening we had the award winning DJ Terry Lewis – after seeing him at a previous wedding, I already had his number saved into my phone for when it was eventually our turn! He sure knows how to get all guests up on the dance floor, and the guests were still dancing even once we had left!

Your Outfits & Accessories

I knew from the off that I would get my dress from Bellissima Weddings in South Woodham Ferres, after being there two years previously with my sister. I arrived at the shop with no real idea what I had in mind but had seen a few on their website that I knew I HAD to try. I tried on 13 dresses in total… the first dress being the one I chose! As our accent colour was Rose Gold – I was desperate for Rose Gold shoes and ones that didn’t look ‘cheap’ I eventually found them in Ted Baker.

I wore beautiful sapphire and diamond earrings gifted to me from my Grandma who was given them years previously by my late Grandpa. I also had a charm hanging on my bouquet of three of my grandparents… a special little touch so that even though they couldn’t physically be there, they could also walk me down the aisle.

The Venue

We first found Moreves Barn after visiting a few other Barns in the same area. When we arrived at Moreves, we instantly fell in love with the setting and once we stepped inside – it was just gorgeous. Not too big and we loved that there are different rooms for different parts of the day. The courtyard was the perfect place for reception welcome drinks and then lots of places for the couple/group photographs too. Dina and Aram were so helpful the whole way through our planning and our guests loved the venue!

Beauty

I have used the lovely Polly Chisholm MUA before, so booking her was one of the first things we did when we knew the date! She was so fab at making suggestions that best suited my skin tone and on the morning was just a joy to have there… so calm and happy! She put us all at ease whilst we were getting ready!

I found Emma Victoria Dallimore on Instagram and absolutely loved the style of her work. The bridesmaids all had their hair down with a plait and I had mine up… I didn’t want to have to worry about hair falling out or curls dropping throughout the day – and I didn’t need to… my hair stayed all day and night!

The Details & Décor

As a graphic designer and running Ellen Grace Bespoke Designs, making my own stationery was a no brainer. I absolutely love it – but I definitely felt the pressure, as I was desperate for it all to be perfect! From the save the dates through to the invitations/order of services and all of the little on the day stationery elements – we had the running subtle eucalyptus theme and subtle hints of Sage green to match the bridesmaids. We had gorgeous flowers everywhere too so the subtle hints of peach stood out beautifully in the foliage! Andy is an electrician by trade so we decided to have light bulb lamps and bulbs as vases throughout the venue also – the little details really made a difference and we wanted our guests to leave, really feeling as though they had been to our wedding!! We also made lots of palette signs and a large palette Polaroid frame that hung outside – a great place for photos! We spent many weekends painting and making – it was a welcome distraction from the admin side of the wedding and we loved it!

For our table plan and names – we wrote our very own recipe for Love and each table was a different element of the Recipe… a slightly different approach to just table numbers – and the place tags featured the recipe for guests to keep. Our bridesmaid Jennie also created a Wedding Newspaper for us too – featuring a timeline of our relationship, games and lots of photographs including some from our super fun engagement shoot with Gemma!

We had a magician entertaining the guests during the drinks reception and also a Caricaturist in the evening reception… everybody absolutely loved them and they are a good way to keep your guests entertained during the times you are off having photographs!

Your Photographer

We found Gemma on Instagram and instantly fell in love with her relaxed style and full of light photographs. We went to meet Gemma and really hit it off. Straight away we knew we wanted her to capture our big day. She was absolutely amazing on the day – so calm, bright and happy – some guests even thought we were friends as she fitted right in! We also loved that there would be a second photographer capturing all of the other moments happening throughout the day. We are so happy with our photos; they really captured a truly wonderful day perfectly.

The Cake

We asked Andy’s mum to make our wedding cake for us… We had decided pretty early on that a Naked cake would be the style we would want and as Yvonne loves making cakes on a regular basis – we thought why not! The cake went down a treat and looked gorgeous! We decorated the cake with flowers to match the bouquets and centrepieces and our Rose Gold ‘Forever and Always’ cake topper was from an Etsy store – PSWeddingsandEvents.

Your Filmmaker

An old family friend of ours Emily started to video weddings a few years ago – and we wanted somebody to film our day who we knew well. Having somebody with a camera in your face all day is quite a big deal so we really loved that we knew Emily. We were also lucky enough to have a drone flying over the reception – being able to see it all from a birds eye view is just amazing, and we will treasure the film forever.

The Flowers

My very talented Godmother offered straight away to do our Wedding Flowers for us. Now… we knew we wanted peonies and eucalyptus – but the rest I left very much up to her. A year to date before – we mocked up some buttonholes, a centrepiece and my bouquet – and that’s when I could really see everything coming together. We had a combination of: peonies, eucalyptus, David Austin roses, sweet Juliet, succulents and lots of greenery and foliage! The flowers turned out more beautiful than we could have ever imagined!

Groomsmen

We found the suits in Next… they were a good shade of Navy and the woollen style was more suited to what Andy had in mind. To stand out – we found the tweed waistcoat from House of Cavani – and we had the matching ties for the groomsmen. Brown ‘monk’ style shoes from ASOS, MARVEL cufflinks and tie pins from Jack Bunneys – wolf heads for the wolf pack and a stag head for him.

Bridesmaids

Finding the Bridesmaids dresses was the hardest part of our planning process. When we first got engaged, I fell in love with some sage green dresses we had found on ASOS. Not wanting to buy bridesmaids dresses before my own – we had put this to the side to come back to. Of course when I was ready to buy the dresses – the ASOS ones were no longer in stock! Eventually I stumbled across Victoria Lou Bridal on Instagram. What I loved about the dresses was that you could firstly buy swatches and then once you have decided on the colour – you can then order sample dresses. I ordered one with the tulle overlay and one without (usually the multi way dresses haven’t got any tulle). We all loved the tulle overlay version of the multi way dress and the colour was just perfect and really complimented the eucalyptus that we would be having in the bouquets. They looked absolutely stunning on all four bridesmaids and were super comfortable.

The Food & Drink

It was very important to us that our guests were well fed and watered throughout the day and Splinters Catering did not disappoint with the food. Our guests were welcomed with Pimms and Prosecco (including a pop up “Pimp your prosecco” stand) and served five different types of canapes before sitting down to a delicious meal. We chose to not have a traditional chicken roast dinner. We instead went for one of our favourite meals, bangers and mash, and it went down a treat. We couldn’t choose just one dessert and so opted for a selection of mini desserts (New York Cheesecake with toffee sauce and honeycomb, Rich Chocolate Brownie and Lemon Tart with raspberry coulis). For the evening food we had Bay Tree Pizza come and make fresh pizzas at the venue – they were delicious and a fab accompaniment to the ‘Cheese’ cake. Pizza and Cheese… you can’t get much better than that!!

The Honeymoon

We always said that lying on a beach, in a hut with stilts in the middle of the sea wasn’t really for us… We like to be out exploring and seeing new places – so our Honeymoon wasn’t going to be any different! We always loved the idea of a Californian road trip and once we started looking into it in depth – we knew that’s where we would go. We had a truly wonderful 3 weeks travelling the West Coast, and this was our route: San Francisco – Sonoma / Napa Valley – Yosemite National Park – Monterey/Carmel – San Luis Obispo – Santa Barbara – Santa Monica – Los Angeles – San Diego. It really was a trip of a lifetime!

Memorable Moments

The church service was a huge highlight for us – it was beautiful, saying our vows to each other and having family and friends there to celebrate the happiest day of our lives meant more than anything in the world! Cutting the cake was the most overwhelming part of the day for us both – turning to see everybody there watching (day and evening guests), knowing that everyone had taken the time out of their lives to celebrate with us was just incredible! Our first dance (The One – Kodaline) was more perfect than we could have imagined – and the pictures are fab of it too!!

Advice For Other Couples

Be creative!! It’s your day that will only ever happen once – so have exactly what you want. Enjoy your planning process and don’t get swept up in what others will think of your day.

Don’t lose sight of why you are getting married, stay true to yourselves and your vision of the day. Take time to step back and watch your family & friends enjoying the day you have worked so hard for. It’s the most magical feeling to know that all of your guests are there to celebrate you as a couple!!